Abby, Zoë and Enzo

We were out and about running some errands, and the girls began telling us all of the different places they'd like to eat for lunch.  We were going to just go back to the house to get lunch, but were persuaded to go to the chinese food buffet.  These two girls sure ate their $1.95 worth, plus some!  Crab rangoon, spare ribs, chicken, broccoli, green beans, fried wontons, jello, flaky apple pie like stuff, delicious warm 'donuts'... tons of good stuff.  They joked that they would just sleep on the bench for nap and then wake up and keep eating.  When it was time to leave, Zoë pouted that she wanted to live there.

Abby and Zoë love our Christmas decorations!  Particularly the hallmark snowmen.  I've had to limit the amount of times those things get pressed though.  They each get to choose one in the morning to press, then in the afternoon they can have another, and in the evening they get to press one more time.  They also get really excited when we turn the lights on around the 'Christmas Window' (lights around the window, the lights on the tree, and two window decorations that also light up).

This afternoon Abby, Zoë, and I met Reanna and Grampy at Toys 'R Us.  Abby and Zoë's job was to walk around the store and rank the things they liked and tell Grampy and Reanna what they'd like to have.  After we explained that the whole store wasn't an option, we were on our way.  I showed them the aisle with the neat play-doh food maker thing and the writing boards, which Abby and Zoë had liked when we were here before, and also that Daddy and I knew they'd get lots of use out of... but on we went.  Abby and Zoë, knowing they were here to pick out birthday presents, were just going crazy with wanting to check everything out.  There were a good handfull of things that they really liked and kept asking to be able to bring home, most of which Mommy dreaded the thought of (thinking ahead to clean-up at home)  Abby was really set on this dress up kit, total one track mind, getting crazy over the thing, but she wouldn't have been able to use a lot fo the stuff in it.  Grampy let it be known that the play kitchen the girls adored were a choice, and Zoë had her sights on one.  She was hugging the picture on the box and trying to practically put the thing in the cart herself.  Luckily it was one of the smaller kitchen sets (and least expensive) and so in the end Grampy got the girls the play kitchen and Auntie Reanna got them a full sized 'doodle pro'.  I took Abby and Zoë to get in the car while they checked out, and then we met them over at Dunkin Donuts.  Abby and Zoë each got to choose their own full sized donut (they always only get munckins) and they were so excited to finally get this chance, thanks to Grampy.  After all of this spoiling, we went back to the house and made loaded baked potatoes for dinner.  Thanks Grampy and Auntie Reanna!

I took Abby and Zoë to Rumble Tumble this afternoon to have some variety of play before Leann and Dakota (and Quinn) came over for dinner.  We had been there for about an hour, when Dakota arrived around 4:30.  At 5:00 p.m. the three girls helped Leann clean up and then we all headed back to our house.  Leann brought pasta sauce and meatballs that she'd saved in the freezer from a caterer used for her brother's wedding.  When we got home Chris had the water boiling and garlic bread thawed for me so all I had to do was get some pasta cooking, the bread in the oven, and the sauce and meatballs heated up.  Abby and Zoë scarfed down their (full) bowls, with no sauce - We let them get away with no sauce since Dakota wasn't having any - and all three girls were done in no time to get back to playing with the toys.  Although Zoë did stick around the table to try and continuously offer things to Quinn, who she saw Leann giving little bits of noodle to.  She ended up succeeding in giving him some garlic toast, as Leann said that would be alright.

After we were all done dinner, we headed over to the Children's Museum for their FREE family fun night.  The most interesting part (for me anyway) was when I had all of the girls go into the "play it cool" room, a two-player biofeedback game with a built-in electroencephalograph (EEG) machine. Each player wears an electrode headband which monitors alpha and theta brainwaves, the brainwaves of relaxation. The player who can become the most relaxed wins the game.  There's a table with a narrow plexiglass dome running the length of it, with a small ball inside, the ball starts in the middle and moves away from the more relaxed person.  Chairs are at either end, where the headbands are at.  First Dakota and Zoë went.  The ball didn't even inch towards Zoë, it went right to Dakota, who was really really excited to see all of the museum.  Next, Dakota and Abby went.  The ball wavered towards Abby for a moment, but then went to Dakota again.  When it was time for Abby and Zoë to go against each other, the ball kept going back and forth evenly between them for a long time.  It finally ended up landing on Zoë's side.  After doing some watercolor painting and checking out all of the stations, we were ready to go.  We said good-bye to our friends at their car and went inside to get ready for bed.

We had some errands to run before we did our Wal-Mart shopping, first stop being the post office.  Abby and Zoë received a package from Great Grandma Ehlers.  When I got in the car with it, Zoë asked, "Is that for us?!"  and when I said that it was she said, "Let's open it NOW!"  I put the package in between Abby and Zoë's seats, and Zoë held onto it for the entire ride, even after she fell asleep on the car ride, she slept with her arm draped over it.  Abby and Zoë both fell asleep at the same time on the ride, and probably got about 20 minutes worth of rest.  They were both cranky when Chris and I got them out of the car at Wal-Mart, but cheered up when I got out the snack I'd brought along.  Abby and Zoë were also excited because we were buying party supplies, always a fun thing.  We got the little helium tank to blow up balloons, got some strawberry cake mix, frosting, and some other party items.  When we were passing the bakery to go to the check-out, we decided to just check out the cake book.  We saw a few different options for Strawberry Shortcake cakes, and asked the baker about prices.  There was a cute sheet cake that could be customized for under $20, so now we're debating on which would be the better choice.  The thought of Strawberry Shortcake on a pretty cake was exciting to the girls, and it would mean no work for us, but we like the idea of individual home made cupcakes as well.  We shall see.

Zoë and Abby were excited to see Marge as always, and got all goofy and silly when she arrived.  We got right into getting heights and weights.  They were the exact same again today.  13.6 kg (29.9 lbs) and 38 ³/₄ inches (a bit over 3 feet).  I forget the exact number of their BMI, but it's 10th-25th percentile.  Their weight is in the 10th percentile, which we need to make sure we keep it at (or bump it up if we can) for the winter to keep them healthy, and their height is 25th - 50th percentile.

We talked to Marge about all of our favorite books, and the girls were excited to talk to her about their birthday and party, which Abby invited her to (she was busy that day), and all sorts of stuff.  One of these days these girls will make it over the 30 pound mark.

Anna's mom, Andrea called this morning.  They had said they'd be able to go to Abby and Zoë's party, but then realized that they couldn't.  She felt badly and wanted to have us over to play.  When we arrived, I noticed there were electricians there.  Andrea said that she'd spaced that they were going to be there.  We started out playing in the play room downstairs, but then went up to Anna Claire's room to be out of the way.  First we played a neat Strawberry Shortcake hide and go seek game.  It was like a mix between bingo and memory.  It was good because it mixed memory, and strategy, and they had to be paying attention to remember where the pieces they needed were.  After that, Abby and Zoë got to see some of Anna Claire's play jewelry and we all picked a piece to wear downstairs to have a snack.  After eating popcorn and peanuts with some juicy/water, we played another game.  It was a cranium game called Hullabaloo and it was lots of fun.  It was a move around game, where you really have to listen and then follow directions before moving to where you're supposed to go... perfect!  After that game it was time for us to go, so we said our good-bye's and got bundled up in our snowy day gear to head home.

Zoë woke up sometime before 3:00 a.m. and Chris and I kept sushing her, which usually works to get them to roll back over and doze off again.  Chris got up at 3:00 to go to the bathroom, and when he did this he fixed Zoë's covers and she reached to grab his hand and give it a kiss and said, "Thanks Daddy!" just as wide awake sounding as could be.  After Chris got back in bed, Zoë asked me to help her get back to sleep, so I crawled under her warming blanket with her and tried patting her for a while... finally she was asleep but when I tried to sneak out of her bed, she woke up again.  I just sat at the head of her bed and patted her for a few more minutes and she went off to sleep.  Unfortunately it was almost 5:00 a.m., time for me to get up.  So, by the time we were through with kids choir at church, I was feeling sleepy.  I decided to take the girls right to the play room instead of upstairs first.  I had told Abby and Zoë that we could stay for Sunday school as I'd said I would be there and could help out since there was a members meeting during that time and other Sunday school teachers would be in it.  Usually the cinema portion of the monthly lesson is at the end of the month, which is why we just had one last week, but due to the meeting, they did the one for this session at the beginning, so we were in the cinema again.  That was fine with me, it was nice to just sit with the girls and relax a little.

Abby and Zoë received their Toys R Us gift cards in the mail today. (They are both in the birthday club)  This year they each got a $3 gift card.  We went to the store this afternoon and walked down (most of) the aisles and oohed and aaahed over the various toys.  Finally we got a roll of strawberry shortcake wrapping paper and a container of gum balls.

Next we went to iParty to look for party supplies.  We got Strawberry Shortcake plates, napkins, cups, party hats (enough for the kids), a table cover, and a number 4 candle.  I inquired about balloon prices, but they were kind of ridiculous.  When we got back to the car, Abby and Zoë got to each have one of their gumballs.

Abby and Zoë are getting a grasp on the different terms for men, women, boys, girls, etc.  I've explained to them before that all girls, women, etc. are females and boys, men, etc. are males.  It's been a little while since we've talked about it, but at the table this morning Abby said "There are three emails and one male"  I tried to supress my giggle as I corrected her and said "females" she said, "no, emails".  Then I had to remind her that emails are something we write on the computer.  "Oh", she said.

I took the girls in to Rumble Tumble this afternoon.  I had made spinach wraps with pesto and veggies inside, and also packed apples and shortbread cookies to take and eat there.  After getting cleaned up, both of the girls ran together straight for the maze.  They climbed and climbed for a long time before moving on to anything else.  For some reason today both of the girls kept getting upset when they got separated, whether it was because one didn't wait for the other or whatever the case.  At one point Abby decided to go in the ball room and while she was in there, Zoë made friends with another little girl and they held hands going down the slide a couple of times, before they both went and joined Abby.  The end of our play time was spent mostly on the trampoline, with a short time of slide and rings.  As we were leaving, Leann gave me a big bag of hand-me-downs from Dakota.

After a couple of little errands in town, we stopped at Wal-Mart to get a couple of things, then headed over to Kohl's to look for electric warming blankets.  There was a big sale in the entire store, so after locating the blankets we wanted, which were 60% off, we went to look at the shoes.  We looked for Chris, but no exceptional deals in anything he'd want, and then for dress shoes for Abby and Zoë, as there current dress shoes are soon to be too small.  Abby and Zoë wanted to try on anything with a heel. (they are big into high heels for some reason these days)  There were some really good sales, and lots of cute shoes, but we had a bit of a hard time finding something practical for the approaching winter weather and with two of the size we needed.  We ended up getting these very cute pairs of Osh Kosh shoes, which are a tan faux suede and very cute.  I was a little concerned, going for a brown instead of black, which seems to go with just about anything, but they were marked down to $10 and we all liked them, so we went ahead and got those.  We looked around a little more and then still had to get to the grocery store.  We went to the Shaw's that we used to always go to, and realized it had been quite a while since we've shopped there (besides Daddy, who stopped in there to get just a couple of items after they re-did the whole store recently) for a couple of reasons.  One being that Abby and Zoë didn't even remember it, and another because one of the men who works in the produce area came up to us to chat and mentioned a few times how he hasn't seen us in such a long time.  Finally, after our shopping was done, we headed back home to let our big helpers get the groceries put away.

Kate called this afternoon to see what we were up to.  I told her that I had been thinking of heading to the outlets to check out Osh Kosh's last day of their holiday sale.  She came over and we took the girls over to see what we could find.  We walked in and first thing saw the snow gear on sale.  Zoë had fallen asleep on the ride over, so Kate carried her in, and amazingly she didn't wake up... at all.  She slept with Kate carrying her the entire time we were in the store, which wasn't all that long, but she still would usually have woken up just being picked up out of the car.  This fact meant that Abby got to be the model for me to try the gear on. 

There were some bib style snow pants in really cute patterns, but one of the only colors in size four were purple.  I grabbed a size 4 and it seemed huge next to Abby, but when I tried it on, it fit pretty much perfectly, just needing adjusting in the straps.  Next I looked at the boots, in the pink they only had one size nine, which fit better (with some room for thick socks) than the size 8's, so I looked in the blue of the same style and there were plenty of size 9's.  I double checked that I'd be able to use both my 10% multiplicity discount as well as the 20% coupon I had (on top of the 60% discount on both the boots and snow pants).  The boots were normally $40 each (for snow boots!) and the snow pants were normally $34 each.  I ended up paying just over $41 for a trip that would have cost $148 if it had all been full price.  Abby was well behaved in the store, and a good sport about trying things on, so she was able to ride the apple ride outside the store.  Zoë woke up just in time for the ride, and rode alongside her sister.

We headed to Rumble Tumble this afternoon, for Dakota's birthday party.  Abby and Zoë had made her cards at home, and Abby wrote "Happy Birthday" while Zoë drew a heart on the paper bag wrapping for her present.  The girls had a great time running around, jumping, climbing, hanging... all of the usual fun. When Abby and Zoë were going through the maze with a couple of other girls, I heard a little girl call "Abby", but directing it towards Zoë.  Another girl with her said, "No, Abby is the purple one".  (Abby had a purple dress on, Zoë's was brown)

With not having a nap, there were a couple of times both Abby and Zoë got more upset about something than they normally would, but they held up well until we left.  After some play time, all of the kids gathered in the party room to sing to Dakota and eat cupcakes.  Once everyone had finished their treats, Dakota went to the ball court to open gifts, where the kids who wanted to gathered around to watch.  There was some more play time, and then it was time to leave.  I was surprised by how well Abby and Zoë just went to get their shoes and coats on, fine about leaving.

As we were stopped at the light on our way to Rumble Tumble, Abby noticed that we were beside Sake and told me of the people eating the Japanese food inside.  She proceeded to tell me that it was her favorite restaurant of all and she liked that they let her take off her shoes there.

Since we are going down to Matt and Caitlin's tomorrow, we needed to get some prep work done tonight.  Abby and Zoë enjoyed watching me peel sweet potatoes and white potatoes, picking up the peels that missed the trash.  They were very eager to help in the kitchen as we got our dishes ready to be brought down. 

Zoë and Abby were also interested in the other items I was packing, taking note of the swim suits I put in the clothes bag and definitely noticing the lollipop and gum bags I put out to take along.  They were pretty excited to know that when they wake up tomorrow it will be the day we go to visit.

Today we had a no nap day again.  Yesterday I had the girls lay in their beds, telling them we were going to have 30 minutes of quiet time and then could do a 30 minute quiet activity... but both girls fell asleep.  Zoë was out pretty much as soon as her head hit the pillow and Abby didn't take long before she was out as well.  I ended up waking the girls a little over an hour later and they were not happy about it.  Then, it took a long time for them to get to sleep at night.  So, today we didn't do nap.

At afternoon snack time I noted that Zoë's eyes were quite sleepy while she was eating her cashews, and the next thing I knew she was asleep at the table, not to be woken up.  They had taken a break from "snowflake making" (read: cutting white paper into tiny bits all over the play mat) to have snack, so when I picked Zoë up and put her on the mat, she was laying in a sea of white paper.  She just did not want to be woken up.  I let her get a 20 minute cat nap in and then woke her up.  She was cranky for about 5 minutes but then was fine after that.  All that and both girls still fell asleep in between 7:30 and 8:00 p.m.  This stage between needing nap and not needing it is so tough. 

We went to feed the birds again... this time armed with three full bags of cereal. (In the pantry re-vamp we just did, we found a few out of date boxes of cereal)  When we got to the park, there didn't seem to be any birds, but as I threw a few handfuls of cereal into the air, they swooped in.  Daddy and the girls had been waiting in the car to see if any birds would come, so they started on over with their bags of cereal.  I had the rice krispies type cereal, which the pigeons liked but the seagulls didn't touch.  Once I opened the chex type cereal bags for Abby and Zoë, the seagulls were all over it!  Abby and Zoë were just having a blast, throwing handfuls into piles, following groups of birds around who didn't have any food, talking to the birds... it was so funny.  After three full bags of cereal, the birds still cleaned up and there were barely and remnants of the cereal remaining when we left.

Today was another no-nap day... there were some crankies and Abby kept telling me that she was tired... they were asleep before 8:00 p.m. again, but were up at 6:20 a.m. this morning, so if they don't start sleeping later in the morning we'll have to remedy that.  Could this be the end of naps?  I don't think so yet.  I think that, while they will dwindle, a couple of days a week at least, the girls will need at least a short nap... we shall see.

We had a big project today... clearing out the "pantry" and cupboards to re-arrange and re-organize where our canned goods, cereals, and baking items were to go.  Abby and Zoë were in charge of first taking all of the cans and sauces, out of our "pantry" area and putting them in like groups on the floor.  Then they cleared out our cupboard where we keep the baking items as Chris and I took down all of cans of juices from the fridge and moved all of the cereal boxes and cleaned stuff up.  Abby and Zoë really were a big help, to get the grouping and clearing done while Chris and I did other things.  After Chris and I had everything put back together, Zoë came into the kitchen, astonished that we'd put all of her hard work away, and so I told her where we'd put everything.  She went around looking in the pantry and cupboards, opening each door, and giving a "uh-huh, okay... looks good."  It was funny how she was "checking" our work.  It was like she felt it was her job to overlook since she'd done so much work in the beginning. 

Taking all of this stuff out gave us a chance to see some things we'd put in the backs of our minds, and so Chris decided we'd make the cranberry-orange with cinnamon struessel bread mix that Grandma Cindy had bought for us from the "lollipop tree" when she was out.  We made them into muffins.  We also decided to have some canned green beans with our cod and noodles for dinner.  Abby was sitting at the counter when Daddy had put the green beans in a bowl and ate a bunch of them before we'd even warmed them up and seasoned them.  Then she and Zoë both ate a lot at dinner time too.  After Abby and Zoë had eaten all of their dinner and had seconds of noodles and green beans, they were still hungry and each got a jello jiggler (another thing we'd made after the girls had seen the jello-o packages while cleaning up) and then had half a muffin.  For snack the girls had another half of muffin with their soy milk.